Category Archive: AFL-CIO

One of the hottest issues before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) right now involves class action lawsuits. In the 2012 D.R. Horton case, the NLRB ruled that employers may not mandate arbitration agreements barring employees from joining together in employment-related class action lawsuits against the employer. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has since refused to throw its weight behind the NLRB […]

The AFL-CIO, America’s largest federation of labor unions, recently released its annual Executive Paywatch report. It’s a routine attempt to, as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka puts it, expose the “greed of corporate CEOs.” The report alleges that the average S&P 500 CEO earned $13.1 million in total compensation in 2016, while the typical U.S. rank-and-file worker […]

There’s wasteful spending and then there’s the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. According to a recent Kansas City Star investigation, the 58,000-member Boilermakers union has earned quite a reputation for “fine dining, stays in posh hotels, and expensive hunting retreats,” while union officials and their relatives take home hefty six-figure salaries. In 2016, President Newton Jones’ total compensation climbed to […]

The vaunted AFL-CIO—the self-proclaimed “voice for working families”—is laying off a whole lot of workers. As Bloomberg‘s Josh Eidelson reports, “The AFL-CIO is dismissing dozens of staff members as part of a restructuring amid continuing declines in union membership and fresh political threats to labor rights.” The federation’s spin was predictable. “We will have to end support for some […]

Union bosses are leading the charge against Labor Secretary-Designate Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants. Back in December, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) released the following statement: “With the intended nomination of Andrew Puzder for Secretary of Labor, [President] Trump has once again shown how out-of-touch he is with what working Americans need.” More recently, the […]

After months of combing LM-2 disclosure forms—the annual union financial reports required by the Labor Department—the Center for Union Facts (CUF) has found that labor unions sent nearly $530 million to Democrats and liberal special-interest groups from 2012 to 2015 for political advocacy purposes. 99 percent of Big Labor’s $530 million advocacy budget—funded primarily by […]

Big Labor is always more active in an election year, supporting the Democrats and liberal causes in line with a pro-union agenda. But 2016 is something else entirely. As The Wall Street Journal reports: According to the most recent campaign-finance filings, unions spent about $108 million on the elections from January 2015 through the end of August, a 38% jump […]

It’s no secret that labor unions are fond of economic redistribution. After all, labor leaders take hundreds of millions of dues dollars from their members and give predominantly to left-leaning causes each year, even though about 40 percent of union households vote Republican. Union bosses defend this reverse Robin Hood arrangement—whereby union workers are compelled to pay for well-funded political advocacy—by claiming that they’re nonpartisan […]